In recent years a sport has developed in the United States that is gaining popularity throughout the world. Known by various names, but referred to in this application as "paintball," the sport generally relates to groups of participants or players formed into two or more sides to engage in mock combat. Each player is armed with a gun, generally a gas-powered gun, capable of firing a generally spherical liquid-filled projectile containing a dye or paint. One such gun used is generally described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,282, issued to Dobbins, et al, on Jun. 26, 1990, and another type of gun is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,819,609, issued to Tippmann on Apr. 11, 1989. Typically the guns exhibit low muzzle velocity and have a relatively short range. The projectiles are designed so that the polymeric coating or shell thereof will rupture on impact, thereby releasing the liquid filling. A method of producing the frangible projectiles is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,001,880 issued to Smith on Mar. 26, 1991. In this manner, the combatants are able to strike an opponent and indicate injury or death, without actually causing physical harm to the opponent. Generally, the projectiles are known in the sport as "paintballs" and the guns that are used as generally known as "paint ball guns". Paintball guns come in may varieties including hand guns and rifles.
Other uses for the gas-operated guns and the frangible paintballs exist in the field of wildlife conservation and animal management, where the guns are generally referred to as "marking guns" and the projectiles are used to assist in counting and in tracking wild animals.
Paintball guns operate by dispensing individual paintballs by gravity feed into the firing chamber of the paintball gun. This dispensing is generally accomplished through a circular aperture in the top of the paintball gun and a vertically-oriented tube is usually used to queue up a plurality of paintballs between the ammunition magazine and the gun itself.
A common problem encountered with paintball guns involves bridging of the balls within the ammunition magazine at or near the point of entrance into the vertical feed tube communicating the magazine with the gun. The bridging problem results in failure of the balls to provide a continuous que and therefore in failure of the magazine to provide a continuous feed supply of projectiles to the gun.